Sweeper: Nostalgia is no excuse

Marc Saurette’s lecture helped to draw critical links between the Middle Ages and contemporary ideas. One example in was Francis Bernard Dicksee’s 1885 painting, Chivalry. Chivalry, which itself was not painted in the Middle Ages, invokes a sense of nostalgia about the period. Chivalry is seen, both rightly and wrongly, as a medieval value. Therefore, in later periods, such as the 19th century, many people invoke chivalry as a medieval value. Dicksee’s painting does this in more than just title. His painting paints a very clear picture of a chivalrous medieval knight coming to the rescue to protect the virtue and purity of the white damsel in distress. This painting, while today historical itself, is hundreds of years from removed from the Middle Ages. However, it, like many other works, reinforces this cultural idea of a chivalrous medieval period that valued and protected white female purity.

In her article, The Birth of a National Disgrace: Medievalism and the KKK, Amy Kaufman speaks to the resurrection of this value. She writes that the Klan harnessed and reinforced an anxious white male chivalry that demanded the protected of frail, virtuous white women. This was a value that had been reinforced and painted as medieval for centuries.

The Klan used this fetishization of Medieval values to advance their racist agenda. As seen over centuries in Europe, nation states based on ethnicity tend to ultimately result in failure (Geary). Therefore if they would like to truly invoke and learn from history, these failures, should logically trump their nostalgia for the Middle Ages.